


Waiting Game

by Shoi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shoi/pseuds/Shoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They keep their eyes forward and their movements next to each other are so automatic there's no room for thinking about it at all. They move in and out of each other's lives, playing endless games of phone tag and avoiding the proverbial elephant with a fervor that borders on religious. It both does and doesn't make sense to Dean. He knows they're both thinking about Sam, who in his absence has become an entity in and of himself, like some long dormant power whose name is now forbidden on mortal lips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting Game

**Author's Note:**

> super old. pre-series, gen. dean in isolation.

Dean snaps awake to the sound of his father's voice faster than he does to the sound of his cell phone ringing. He's slumped against the window in the passenger seat of John's truck, rain trailing the glass in coiling snake-shapes as they speed down the highway. Dean had left the Impala in the motel lot at his father's advice. The truck's tires were better equipped for a quick getaway down a long gravel road and Dean had been willing to listen, thinking of the potential damages flying rocks could do to his black paint job. They've just wrapped another full structure salt-and-burn, an ancient farmhouse too infested with old death to be spared.

"Phone's ringing." 

John is hunched at the wheel, squinting past the windshield wipers and casting glances at Dean out of the corner of his eye. Dean realizes that's his cue to stop the noise and he fumbles for it, nearly dropping it, manages finally to flip it open to check the number. It's not one he recognizes save the area code, which makes his stomach twist. 650 for Palo Alto. 

He looks up at his father, who's studiously not looking at him, his jaw set in something like resignation. John obviously expects it's yet another girl trying to get a hold of his elder son and he'd rather not think of the implications of that. He's more than aware of what Dean can be like around women-- and what women can be like around Dean-- and though he's not expressly disapproving, he's more than given Dean the impression that he'd just as soon not know the details of Dean's sex life. 

Dean's nervous for an entirely different reason. He stares at the screen for a moment longer before he hits the silencer on the side and tucks the phone away. Various things he's not ready to deal with yet, and especially not in front of his father. 

"Who was that?" John asks, and his tone is very carefully conversational, trying not to be disapproving or invasive, because Dean is twenty-six now and there's no reason for him to control _every_ aspect of Dean's life. John is obviously uncomfortable with that lack of control, and when he's honest with himself Dean is uncomfortable with it in some ways, too. 

"Uh," says Dean, rubbing at his eyes and cursing sleep for muddying his senses so badly. He's not prepared for an open conversation right now. "Uh, some... number. I didn't recognize." He stares blankly at the damp dark road beyond the car, wishing he could get out of the cramped truck and stretch his legs. The air is stiflingly warm. His heart is going way too fast. "Not somebody in my contacts," he adds, aware he's probably saying a little too much. 

John grunts, and flicks the windshield wipers up to a higher speed. He readjusts his hands on the steering wheel and Dean realizes he's waiting for a judgment that's not coming. He lets out his breath carefully, trying not to turn it into an audible sigh of relief. 

They get back to the motel room they've been sharing and Dean showers fast, scrubbing mud and caked blood out of his hairline. He's tired and stiff but not ready yet for sleep, and so when he's clean he gets out and pulls on a fresh set of clothes, runs some gel through his still damp-hair, and grabs his keys from his discarded mud-caked jeans. "Goin' out for a while," he says to John, who's spreading papers in a semi-circle around the entire room, across both beds and the floor and pressed up against the TV stand. John just nods, distracted, focused on the job at hand. He's standing there with his fist pressed to his mouth and his eyes lowered and he looks like a general at war. 

"Call me if something comes up," Dean says, his hand on the doorknob and his voice low. "Please?" He's not looking at his father but he feels John's eyes lift to him, weighing the measure of the quiet plea. 

"Course I will," John says, a little gruff. Dean smiles at nothing, knows he's lying, and he opens the door and goes out to the car. 

Dean finds a cozy bar and an equally cozy blonde, has himself a grand time playing darts and doing shots of whatever pleases him. He stays out until four AM and returns to an empty motel room. The papers are cleaned up, his father's bags are gone, and there's no sign that anybody but Dean was ever occupying the room at all, save for the note in John's handwriting. It's fluttered off the TV stand and onto the carpet, and Dean bends down to pick it up even though the motion makes his sloshing head whirl a little. 

_Albuquerque, New Mexico. One week._

He's not surprised, of course. He's known since yesterday evening John was planning on bailing again, probably to scout out something big and bad. It's not uncommon, these days. He stands there in the dark holding the note, and he thinks maybe a few years ago he would've been alarmed by the changes in his already off-kilter lifestyle. He and John state-hopping, teaming up on the bigger stuff and splitting up again just as fast. John says they cover more ground that way but Dean thinks it's more than that. His father has become as phantom as the ghosts they track and Dean feels his nerves sing sharp every time he's left on his own. It's got nothing to do with his ability to look after himself; he's probably better equipped to take care of himself than most guys his age ever will be. 

It's that he can feel the remains of his family fraying apart like an old stretch of rope pulled far too thin, the different strands all going off in different directions. Weakened, close to snapping. He knows why. He's known why for years. 

Dean and John don't fight or argue about what they're doing or how they're doing it, like soldiers in a careful formation. They keep their eyes forward and their movements next to each other are so automatic there's no room for thinking about it at all. They move in and out of each other's lives, playing endless games of phone tag and avoiding the proverbial elephant with a fervor that borders on religious. It both does and doesn't make sense to Dean. He knows they're both thinking about Sam, who in his absence has become an entity in and of himself, like some long dormant power whose name is now forbidden on mortal lips. 

Or maybe that's a little melodramatic, Dean thinks, but he gives himself a break because it's almost five in the morning and he's got a headful of impending hangover. He sits down on the neatly made bed and pulls his phone out of his pocket, and looks at it for a long moment. The ache of loneliness is sharp enough, hated enough to drive fear headlong into potentially foolish action. 

He dials back the unknown number and waits, in that moment absolutely certain as to who had tried to reach him, certain that the time of night wouldn't matter when Sam picked up in surprise at the other end. He holds on even while it rings and rings and goes unanswered, until there's the click of a voicemail message kicking in. Dean is fully aware he's holding his breath. 

_"Hey, you've reached Jessica! Leave me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks!"_

Dean clicks the phone closed before he can accidentally leave a creepy heavy-breathing voicemail on some chick's phone, and he laughs and rubs his eyes and reminds himself that Sam can and will hold a grudge for as long as he can possibly manage. He's not calling Dean until Dean calls him. 

Dean sleeps for a few hours and leaves as the sun finishes clearing the horizon. 

*** 

John isn't in New Mexico. Dean's checked out all the usual failsafe indicators, specific aliases used at motels, coded messages left at indicated gas stations. There's nothing, no sign his father's so much as breathed in Albuquerque in the past few weeks. 

But he's been late a time or two before, and after a few hours of hanging around downtown, starting up vaguely uncomfortable conversations with strangers in coffee houses and cafes, Dean finds out about the issues at the Carrie Tingley Hospital, and after that it's easy to let go of worry; hostile lurking apparitions in a children's hospital are somewhat more attention grabbing. Dean wraps the issue in three days and spends his final night in town at a bar overflowing with laughing drunk college kids. He gets all buddy buddy with a couple of arrogantly wasted frat boys who think playing with a pool table at daddy's summer beach house means they're never gonna scratch. He sharks them without mercy and keeps that friendly disarming smile on, and he wants to tell them that the best way to get good at pool is to play because you've got no other way to feed yourself and your kid brother. 

None of them catch on, though. Even two hundred bucks in the hole to him they're all grins and whoops and pats on the back and Dean isn't feeling companionable at all. 

"Hey bro," says the ring leader, who's pretty obviously Mr. Popular Johnny Normal. He slams a hand down hard on Dean's bad shoulder and Dean just narrowly avoids slugging him into the far wall. "Hey, we're... hey, we're goin' back to the house, bro, you're, you should, you should _come._ " He laughs way too loudly and Dean grins and feels his frayed nerves preparing to snap one by one. 

"No thanks," he said, jovial-like, because Dean Winchester's nothing if not _real_ friendly when the need's on him. "My old lady'd kill me if I stayed out too late. You know how it goes." He rolls his shoulders in a shrug that unseats the unwelcome hand, and the frat kid beams with drunken goodwill, nodding along in enthusiastic agreement. Dean grins back at him and makes his escape to the parking lot, where the Impala waits, freshly dented along the driver's side door where some asshole wasn't paying attention. 

Dean's too tired to be angry. He stares at the mark for a long minute and then he gets into the car and pulls out his phone to stare at his contacts list. His father's number comes up first, alphabetically. Then a lot of women's numbers he never intends to use again, and Sam's, finally, which he highlights and looks at for a while. He imagines what might happen if he actually manages to summon up the courage to dial, and finally he closes the phone and puts it away. 

Sam had always been pretty good at making friends when he wanted to, even when they were kids. He's got an easy humble charm about him that tends to draw people in, and college hadn't been any exception. For those first two years Dean had heard a thousand stories, told to him breathlessly over the telephone as though he was meant to already have a clear mental picture of what these people looked like, what they did every day and what their relation to Sam was. _So Roger was saying that if we were going to make the game we were going to have leave_ right then _and Ben said, like hell!_ and _So me and Jenny and Jess, we ended up driving out to the coast just because we could, and it was freezing_ and _Dean, I bet you'd really like these people. You should drop by and stay for a weekend sometime._

The few times Dean _had_ visited Sam at school he was always real careful not to meet any of Sam's friends. It was all vaguely clandestine meetings in coffee shops and restaurants, and Dean always a little wary like he was going to be noticed by someone judging. He'd had no desire to become an entity to be discussed or invited places or questioned after. He wonders nowadays if that had been a mistake, because then maybe it wouldn't have been so easy for Sam to just close the door on him in silence, because then there'd be people wanting to know how Dean was doing, where he was. Sam has a guilt complex a mile wide, sometimes, and Dean thinks maybe, maybe with that kind of repeatedly applied pressure, they wouldn't be playing this waiting game. The fight had been stupid but a long time in coming, and Dean knows that deep down, really. There had only been so many words from Sam about Dean's potential for better things that either of them could endure. 

Dean can shoot anything with a trigger with better than good accuracy and excellent speed. He can clean and stitch up wounds with neat, careful sutures, so small that the tiny puckered imprints of thread have faded from all his own self-tended scars. He can set broken bones and knows ten different ways to knock a fully grown man on his ass with one strike. He speaks Latin and some Greek and Hebrew and even passable Akkadian, when the time's right. He can recite exorcism rituals from a dozen different traditions, can field strip twenty-six different types of firearms in record breaking time, and he'll never not hear Sam's voice in his ears telling he should grow up, maybe, and try to _make something_ of himself. _Something, Dean, you're smart too, damn it, I know you are, so why do you always have to act like-?_

It's been two years now since Dean finally responded to the endless, lifelong accusations of worthlessness, and they're not words he'll forget lightly, because even as they'd come out of his mouth he'd realized how much he sounded like his father. _If you aren't even gonna try to understand this family, Sam, then I don't think you need to be bothering with us at all._

And for two years, Sam hasn't. 

Dean thinks, if John is a phantom in this world, then so is he. He's slowly disappearing along the dusty back roads of America, dirtied up into nothing thanks to mud and blood and silence so thick and so throat-clenching it feels like a tangible being in the car with him every day. He's wondered more than once if that's what it means to be a good hunter, a solitude so deep and aching that one passes through grief and out to the other side and into apathy. Dean feels apathetic, beneath his anxiety, and that's why it scares him so badly, like his other emotions are just cover ups attempting to hide the fact that he's not feeling much at all lately. It's not like him, and he knows it. 

Sam would ask him guilelessly if he wanted to talk about it. John wouldn't ask him anything at all. 

But this isn't something he can control, and it's not something he can afford to waste time over thinking; it's no big deal, after all. Most things in the face of daily death and danger aren't. A little perspective is all it ever takes to quit feeling sorry for himself. 

"Don't be a pussy," Dean mutters to himself, and starts the car. 

*** 

John doesn't answer his phone in Texas. Dean puts himself up in Bel Air on a credit card that's got the name Richard Nielsen printed on it. He drives for almost three hours into Euless and finds a bar that's got a massive stuffed alligator in the entryway, its jaws opened permanently, free peppermints clustered between its teeth. He finds a girl who thinks he's got something to offer that they can both forget about in a day or two. He lies in her bed and he stares out the window to the moving dark street beyond and he feels like jumping out and making a break for it. 

He kinda wonders what Sam would think of this, remembers that Sam never had much to say about his sleeping around with whatever caught his attention, and thinks it's a sign of how damn worked up he is that he's thinking about his brother while he's lying in a strange woman's bed. 

He leaves at dawn, not bothering to say goodbye. 

*** 

In New Orleans Dean wakes himself up with his own muttering, opens his eyes to find himself slumped over in the passenger seat of his car on a back road leading out of the city, a brand new gris-gris hanging around his neck and a sour taste in his mouth. He remembers he's been dreaming, something about a red devil woman who wanted too much death and not enough sex; he remembers he was supposed to try John's number again, mentally cross his fingers and hope for an answer, because praying for one sounds a little too frightened. 

Dean's not scared. He tells himself that. He almost believes it. 

His fingers sort through the papers scattered across the car's floor, snagging the remains of the case file, old hacked transcripts from Stanford-- Sammy obviously putting some real effort into getting his grades straightened this semester-- and finally finds his phone. 

_"This is John Winchester. If you're calling about an emergency, leave me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."_ Click. Same as two days ago. Dean doesn't let it bother him just yet. 

"S'me." He wipes a hand across his face, aware how much he's slurring. "You can, ah, ignore that last voicemail, don't need the brick dust anymore. Wasn't pombagira after all, just a couple of really pissed off bakor and their houses. Um," he pauses here, not sure of what else to say, because his father's been missing for almost two weeks now without a word or a sign. "Um, I'm gonna hang around here for a few hours and get stuff sorted and then I'm gonna head west, I think you said something about, uh, New Mexico, so... give me a call when you get a chance, Dad, we can work out our next move." Please, Dean thinks, but doesn't say, "All right, talk to you soon." 

He hits the end button and closes the phone, clicks on the stereo and leans back again, trying to sort things out a little more effectively. The guitar snaps in like gunshots, like he's hit in the chest. 

_In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man  
now I've reached that age I try to do all those things the best I can_

Dean tips his head back and thinks, well, maybe. Maybe he is a little scared. Maybe it's okay to admit that to himself, because there's nobody else here to listen except Jimmy Page and the Impala, neither of whom have ever judged him harshly. 

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe is daunting. Dean puts it away and slides back over to the driver's side and starts the engine. Zep 1 follows him down the road and he's trying not to let the music get too far into his head. 

He heads into a Starbucks for the first time in months. He's never much cared for the froo-froo atmosphere and so he doesn't take time to sit around in the little overstuffed leather chair area to savor the brew, just takes it back out to the car and leans against the driver's side door to take his first swig. Half of his mind is calculating the time distance from here to Las Cruces based on previous driving experiences. The other half is betraying him and his carefully constructed calm. _Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is wrong and you're alone._

"Nice car." 

If I had a nickel, Dean thinks, but it's an easy female voice and so he turns with a little grin and lifts his coffee cup to toast the leggy brunette who's sauntering by, smiling at him. "Seats two," he says, welcoming distraction in the form of a great pair of tits, but she just laughs and shakes her head and walks on in to the Starbucks, and in her wake Dean feels the iron bands around his chest tightening, tightening, and those mental distance calculations turn around into wondering if he can make it to Silicon Valley on one tank of gas. 

Instead he leaves the car and walks down the sidewalk to the payphone on the corner, and he calls the girl he's fooled around with for the past two days to let her know he's done and he's leaving town. 

"Really?" she says, obviously disappointed, and Dean's trying like hell to remember her name, vaguely self-consciously aware of just how half assed his compassion's been lately. "Yeah," he says, resting his hip against the glass of the phone booth, an elbow propped above his head, fingers dangling. "Yeah, you know, that's how it goes." He realizes he's smiling stupid, ingratiating, like she can see him and it'll help detach her a little easier. Dean hates the clingy ones, the ones who think maybe because they've seen him naked they've actually seen him bared. He can remember her, dark haired and tanned and just a little French, with a pretty laugh and a way of twitching her nose when she was pleased about something. He can remember what she felt like all twisted up against him but he can't for the life of him remember what her favorite movie is, what she likes to drink or if she's got any dreams for the future. He's pretty sure that makes him an asshole. 

"Dean," she says, with real hurt. There's a twinge of guilt, because while Dean may be an asshole he's not heartless, but there's not much to be done. "Sorry, Marie," he says, all smooth and thanking Christ that the name had come to him all of a sudden. "Sorry, but in my business you can't stay in one place for too long." He can hear her indrawn breath on the other end of the phone and adds, "But don't worry, baby. When the government sends me back out against SPECTRE, I'll still think of you on those cold Russian nights." 

He hangs up the phone before she can start screaming at him. 

As he walks back to the car he feels every bruise and every pulled muscle in his body aching for the first time today, that left shoulder that always gets tight and tense when he sleeps on it wrong, lower back like a painfully coiled spring, and he can practically map the shape of the spreading bruise on his hip by the pain twinges as he moves. He fumbles the Impala's door open and sits in the driver's seat and feels his spine tingling with relief at momentary stillness. He leans forward and puts his forehead against the steering wheel and breathes out and lets the past week catch up to him at last. 

Dean is exhausted, and his bruised hip hurts thanks to the bend of his leg in sitting position. He straightens up and blinks a few times, and puts complicated thought away. 

"Ain't you," he tells himself in the rear view, and grins briefly. "That's not you." Dean Winchester is a maverick, a clever rogue of questionable motivation and even more questionable reputation. He needs nothing and no one to help him deal with his problems. 

He's pretty sure. 

*** 

John doesn't answer his phone in Arizona. Dean lectures a local coven of fledgling witches on playing with magic they don't understand or respect, toasts a summoned shadow creature who's got a serious allergy to light, and finds himself eventually in the apartment of a woman called Elaine. Elaine has a tongue stud, and she's an artist, a painter of desert colors on canvas and pottery. She reminds Dean of his first serious fling, small and dark-haired and filled with a deep and confident hunger. They fuck on pretty much every surface her studio has to offer, and for some reason Dean doesn't leave right away in the morning. He tell himself it's the promise of free coffee and eggs, though he knows deep down there's probably a better reason, and it has everything to do with the silence in his car. 

"You snore, you know," she says as Dean comes into the kitchen, wearing his jeans and not much else. She presses a freshly brewed cup of coffee into his hands and Dean smiles, leans against her counter, and cocks an eyebrow as she turns back to the stove. 

"Don't sound too bothered by it," he drawls, and sips the coffee even though she's already taken the liberty of adding cream and sugar and he usually prefers his black. Elaine snorts, and doesn't turn around as she speaks. 

"I’m not," she says, spatula moving. "It's a small price to pay. I had a good time." She says it without a hint of laughter and with such calm sincerity he's a little taken aback. He's used to women who giggle and wink and hint that maybe it's something they'd enjoy on a more permanent basis. Elaine's tone is friendly, pleasant, and utterly, absolutely impersonal; she is closing the door on permanence between them with flawless skill. It warms him for some reason, to find that this time it's going to be easy and casual and guilt free, and he grins wide even though she can't see it. 

"Me too," he says, without the smug swagger in his voice. She turns to eye him, trying to read the intent behind his words, and he toasts her with his coffee mug. "Sometimes a good time's all you need." 

Elaine looks at him for a moment and then she moves to grab plates. A moment later she's setting two eggs in front of him, still not smiling but with an air of general companionship. "You know by now most guys are asking me about the second date?" she says, wiping her hands on the dishtowel. 

"You know by now most chicks are trying to picture what our kids are gonna look like?" Dean tilts his head a little comically. She laughs, startled, and so does Dean, surprising himself a little with how much lighter that simple act makes him feel. 

"No," she says, and leans against the counter with her own cup of coffee in hand, "Not you. Even if I was looking." She purses her pretty lips and runs a hand through her jaggedly cut hair. "I'm not interested in settling for anyone unless I know he's going to give himself over a hundred percent." 

Dean smirks around a mouthful of egg. "You don't know I'm not," he mumbles, just keeping up the banter really, but she laughs again and widens her eyes. 

"You think I can't tell?" she says. "Anybody could, if they were smart enough." 

That makes him pause, a thread of anxiety beginning to unfold in his stomach. The language of secrets is a potent one in his life and the idea that he's broadcasting something he shouldn't sends chills down his spine in a sick shiver. "Tell what?" he says, calm and outwardly unmoved. 

Elaine grins, like she's in on a joke, and sets her mug down to grip the counter behind her with both hands, leaning back and crossing one ankle over the other. She dips her head down and her dark eyes never leave him. "You're already given to something," she says, and despite himself, despite everything Dean feels his movements stop, his breath catch a little. "I don't know who or what it is, but it's big, and it owns you." She rolls a slim shoulder and turns back to her stove. "I think maybe you should stop running from it, whatever it is." 

Dean doesn't know what to say to that. The only thing that comes to mind is, _you're probably right._

*** 

Dean is getting into his car in the parking lot of Elaine's apartment building when his phone begins to buzz, the angry impatient sound of a missed voicemail. He doesn't remember his phone ringing at all. He dials back voicemail and puts the phone to his ear, and he listens to his father's voice crackling unsteady and barely audible over the sound of static and interference. He stands there in the broad daylight, motionless for several seconds after the message cuts off. 

He looks up at the sun, judges it to be somewhere around ten o'clock in the morning. It's been three weeks since he last heard from his father and Dean is freshly showered and well fed and thoroughly sick of trying to work through this on his own. He gets into the car and yanks open the glove compartment, rifling through fake IDs and shoving the handgun aside until he finds his map of the West Coast, spilling the unfolded sections of it all over the front seat of the car. He fumbles a pen out of the mess somewhere and starts marking out the fastest route into Palo Alto. 

He doesn't bother with the phone. He's just going to show up, he thinks, like that proverbial phantom, and he's gonna demand Sam's help and Sam won't be able to tell him no. He remembers Sam's new address, and even if that's changed there are ways to track him down. He's not worried about what the reception is going to be like. He's not worried at all anymore, he finds, but feels like a floodgate's been opened, all the anxiety and well-ignored pain washing away under the torrent of realization. Sam is still Sam after all, and Dean is still Dean, and whatever they've done to each other Dean trusts there are ways to fix it. He _wants_ to fix it. He wants his brother back. The knowledge of that, being able to put his feelings into those simple words, is a world of relief. 

Dean will keep his game face on and his smile cocky with hardly an eye blink of effort. Eventually, Sam will remember who he is. Who they are. 

After that, Dean thinks, everything will be just fine.


End file.
